Between the Lines

It's not his fault. They all do it. The hollow words, the meaningless threats, the tired warnings. That sound you hear is the roar of inevitability.

Ask North Korea. Threats and threats and threats. Then they made a nuke, test fired a missile into the Yellow Sea, and now nobody says boo. There they sit. The game's over.

The one guy who didn't follow the script was George W. Bush. Right or wrong, he did something after threats didn't work. It got him a two-term presidency, but it also got him lambasted as a dummy and an evil dictator the world over. Politicians want the former, but not at the price of the latter.

There's the big L word: legacy. Or the G word: guts. They don't always go together too well.

Some guys do well with their legacy by going the gutsy route, but it's so damn risky. Better to play it the easy way, the way most Western politicians do when faced with thugs.

Here's President Obama's weekly address from this morning. I'm reading between the lines:

This week, we joined with the United Kingdom and France [this is NOT a unilateral decision] in presenting evidence that Iran has been building a secret nuclear facility to enrich uranium [this is different then the totally out in the open facility; they have two]. This is a serious challenge to the global nonproliferation regime [which didn't stop North Korea, but hey, there's always hope], and continues a disturbing pattern of Iranian evasion [please ignore the word "pattern," as it might make you believe that they won't change their tune after we ask pretty please]. That is why international negotiations [this is NOT a unilateral decision, et cetera] with Iran scheduled for October 1st now take on added urgency [as opposed to before; now it's important].

My offer of a serious, meaningful dialogue to resolve this issue remains open [no doubt the Iranian dictators will listen this time - because we're serious]. But Iran must now cooperate fully with the International Atomic Energy Agency, and take action to demonstrate its peaceful intentions [last month they shot women in the street for taking part in political demonstrations; the regime also hangs people for the crime of being gay; but now they have a chance to show their peaceful intentions; look, we all know this a load of bull, but I have to say this stuff].

On this, the international community [this is NOT a unilateral decision, et cetera] is more united than ever before. Yesterday, I stood shoulder-to-shoulder with our European allies [this is NOT a unilateral decision, et cetera] in condemning Iran’s program. In our meetings and public statements, President Medvedev of Russia and I agreed [this is NOT a unilateral decision, et cetera] that Iran must pursue a new course or face consequences. All of the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council [this is NOT a unilateral decision, et cetera], and Germany [this is NOT a unilateral decision, et cetera], have made it clear that Iran must fulfill its responsibilities [okay, okay; Iran doesn't have any responsibilities except to themselves, but we're going to pretend that they share the same world view as us. We're making it up. Easier that way].

Iran’s leaders must now choose [I hate using that 'with us/with the terrorists' language, but I wrote this first thing in the morning and I was still a little groggy. Don't ask me about it later] – they can live up to their responsibilities and achieve integration with the community of nations. Or they will face increased pressure and isolation, and deny opportunity to their own people [sure, this paragraph was full of beans, but cut me some slack. Iran doesn't have any responsibilities, true, and they don't care if they're isolated, fine, and they don't care about their own people, okay. But...well, what do you want me to say? It's all a farce, anyway].

These are the urgent threats of our time. And the United States is committed to a new chapter of international cooperation [this is NOT a unilateral decision, etc. Huh? Come again? Oh. How can there be international cooperation when nobody's cooperating? Search me.] to meet them. This new chapter will not be written in one week or even one year [sorry, but this my out. I know it's a bit slippery, but come on, there's nothing I can do about this stuff. Iran's going to get a nuke one way or the other. If they get it within a year, I need to be able to say that it was going to take more than a year to get international cooperation kick started. A week, a year, who cares? I'd say 'decade' but you'd think I flipped my lid]. But we have begun. And for the American people and the people of the world [in case you thought this was a unilateral decision], it will mean greater security and prosperity for years to come [in other words, we aren't going to accomplish jack; but it feels good to know that in some mystic future, you'll have a safe, secure life. Anybody got a glass of water?].

Pressure For Whom?

Jake Tapper:

This morning President Obama, French President Sarkozy, and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown will accuse Iran of building a clandestine underground nuclear fuel manufacturing plant, which Iran's leaders have hidden from weapons inspectors, senior administration officials tell ABC News...

The president is expected to say that this news "increases pressure on Iran to come clean about its nuclear program," a senior administration official tells ABC News. He will described "great and increasing doubts about the strictly peaceful nature of the program -- which is what the Iranians suggest."

Uhhhh...How does this even remotely increase pressure on Iran to come clean about its nuclear program? Saddam Hussein violated international law for years, ignored sanction after sanction, kicked weapons inspectors out of his country, and refused to say where his weapons of mass destruction were. So Bush invaded and bingo, people around the world called Bush's war illegal and dubbed him Hitler.

Will Obama et al have have the stones to roll the dice like that? Unlikely. Obama has been saying for over a year that he's willing to have a chat with Iran. He said this even though he knew about the second secret reactor. So for him, this is just old news. When the US failed to condemn Ahmadinejad's "election" and the violence that followed, this sent a clear message: no matter what happens, we're still willing to talk. And talk. And talk. Which translates as "time."

At a stretch, I can one day see some cruise missiles or an Israeli airstrike. But a full-on, "Here's your pressure, jerkwad" invasion is a fantasy. And Ahmadinejad knows it.

Harper

Well, maybe someone with a fancy title was reading the Twitter reports of women being gunned down in the streets of Tehran.

I Really Care About Nucle--Michael Jackson's Dead?

I was walking down the street a few minutes ago and heard some jackass blaring a radio from his mid-life-crisis Jeep. In a roundabout way this got me thinking that there hasn't been much trouble in the world lately. Weird connection, I know, but it went something like this: If a friend told me about a guy blaring a radio outside his house, I'd shrug and say, "Yeah, there's fools everywhere." But when Jeep Guy does it in front of my place, it becomes, "There's goddamn fools everywhere!"

The debacle in Myanmar a long time back - feels like long; it's been a year - proved to me that caring is about proximity, both in time and place. Modern media has the power to make every place on the planet seem like it's right next door, if only for a few minutes. The tsunami (or was it an earthquake?) in Myanmar was on everybody's minds last year. The president had to do something, we had to raise money to help the people. Even peaceniks were saying that an invasion would be proper, to topple the government in Myanmar because the thugs weren't feeding their people.

And it all went away. Just like that. I have to assume that Myanmar's people are still living in abject poverty and that their rulers are still thugs. But I haven't received a chain-email request for money in a long, long time, and nobody on Facebook has the word "Myanmar" on their profile, declaring that we need to help these people. In a strange way, Myanmar just ceased to exist.

Maxim: time doesn't heal all wounds; it heals our wounds.

Caring is about proximity and time. The 9/11 memorials prove that. 8 years on and there's token gestures of remembrance, but not too many moments of silence in the office. The anniversary of Pearl Harbor warrants an occasional hat tip on the evening news, and in fact if it wasn't for the evening news' hat tip, nobody would remember the date of Pearl Harbour. And when's the last time somebody asked us to remember the dead from Waterloo? When women were being gunned down in Iran a couple of months ago, everybody was glued to the Twitter reports. Now, nothing.

Time. Proximity. They're all that matters when it comes to caring. Tornado in Kansas? Interesting. Tornado on my street? Terrifying. The thug states of the world understand this better than anyone. Give people enough time and they will forget everything. The further away the "crisis," the faster they'll forget. Nowadays, it only takes a few weeks, even less if a pop star dies.

Not that any of this is all bad. We'd be basket cases if we wandered around for the rest of our lives feeling exactly as we did the moment after something traumatic happened. But I do laugh when people screech how concerned they are with far flung places on the earth that are going through a hard time. My answer? "Call me in a year." There's no chance they will. (Incidentally, I Googled "Myanmar," clicked the news link, and was greeted with the today's headlines: Seven Bomb Blasts in Myanmar. Apparently no one was hurt. In other news: Myanmar Doubles Political Arrests; Elections a Sham, Group Says).

So there I was walking down the street thinking about this kind of stuff, and then I flicked to Drudge and it suddenly seemed prescient or at least apropos:

Czechs and Poles expressed rancor and relief Thursday that President Barack Obama had scrapped plans for a U.S. missile defense shield on their territories, reflecting deep divisions over a proposal that had also enraged Russia..."Considering Iran as a threat has been a wrong policy since the beginning," said Kazem Jalali, the spokesman for Iran's influential parliamentary committee on national security and foreign policy. "Iran has said that it is ready to discuss and share responsibilities in global security."

Whether it's a good or bad idea isn't my point. Fact is, a decision like this doesn't happen the day after 9/11, but it does happen 8 years after 9/11. That's life. Always the way it goes. A little bit of quiet - besides, you know, the odd missile from North Korea landing in the ocean - and things like missile shields seem unnecessary and kind of silly to people with an Everyone's Beautiful In Their Own Way bent. The administration says that they're not really scrapping missile defense, they're redesigning it. Doesn't sound so bad. Besides, if the Russians and Iranians agree with it, then it must be a good idea.

Proximity and time. Thugs building missiles in Iran? A little nervous. Thug loading a shotgun outside my door? A lot nervous.

Should you care about Iranian missiles and American defense shields? Depends what happens next. See you on Facebook.

The Sound of History

I've spent a lot of time reading about Nazi Germany. Sometimes I've found myself wondering what it would have sounded and looked like to have been there. The audio of this report made me think of Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass. While that happened over sixty years ago, this is now happening in Iran. Take away the car alarm, and it's probably as good a hint as any.

"Sean, why do always go on about Nazi Germany?"

Your answer: